Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Although the Republican controlled House of Representatives recently passed Audit the Fed, HR 459, Audit the Fed will never pass nor will the Fed ever be abolished legislatively. Republicans really do support the Federal Reserve because it funds their wars and empire. Furthermore, all the Republican YEA's to Audit the Fed were nothing more than an act of political expediency because Republicans in Congress absolutely do understand that Audit the Fed stands no chance of ever getting out of the Senate where it only has 30 co-sponsors and could never survive a presidential veto.

The Federal Reserve is the mother's milk of empire, tyranny and statism. Big government and central banks exist for no purpose except to massive concentrate wealth and power. Moreover, it's absolutely true that the phrase "99% vs the 1%" is indeed a valid premise even if it was hatched by socialists on the left. What the progressive left fails to grasp is that it was liberal progressive Democrats who delivered unto us the Federal Reserve that was empowered to transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

Killer drones just keep getting smaller. The Army wants to know how prepared its defense-industry partners are to build what it calls a “Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System.” It’s for when the Army needs someone dead from up to six miles away in 30 minutes or less.

As a solo general surgeon in private practice, in 2004, with a gross business income before taxes of roughly $500K, I figured that the 39.6% Federal + 9.98% Iowa state top income tax rates + 6% [state] sales + Medicare which no longer peaked out, + property taxes, medical license fees, malpractice fees which were already at $100K for me and headed higher, and no scholarship help for the 4 out of 10 kids in college at the time, my marginal rate was somewhere north of 70%. Once I 'retired' from surgery and became a biology professor, making around $50K, my gross income was one tenth as much, but now one of my kids got a full-ride scholarship at [University], another got a half-ride scholarship, and another got a couple thousand that would not have been given under my earlier circumstances. By my 'going Galt', I figure that the .gov took at least a $200K hit (I remember previously paying $161K in fed. income taxes alone), whereas my disposable income was only about half of what it had been before.

The Republican Party is running scared. Either that or they think the country is better served by restricting voter choice to only those candidates they want to appear on the ballot. Could this be the same party that is supposed to totally support the Constitution and personal freedoms?

The Afghan government on Wednesday banned YouTube from the country for the first time to prevent people from watching an anti-Islam film, The Innocence of Muslims, which sparked a riot in Libya that killed the US ambassador and three other American diplomats.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Watching Phil LeBlow providing Ford with a reacharound this morning reminded us of total farce that is both the forest and the trees of the US auto industry. We have discussed the FUBAR channel-stuffing and the subprime-lending SNAFU but now, as Reuters reports , we see the ugly truth about GM's little baby "the Volt is over-engineered and over-priced". Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds.

Furthermore, there are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce. And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others.

President Obama is tearing the shroud of secrecy off his once hush-hush death-by-drone program.

From his interview with Ben Swann, host of Fox 19’s Reality Check, to his sit-down with CNN’s chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin, the kill-list compiler-in-chief is gradually exposing details of the principles he purportedly follows before targeting someone for assassination.

The president may assume that there is little reason to try hiding something that is being publicized daily — except in the mainstream media. In fairness, the New York Times has done fine work chronicling the expansion of the use of drones, as well as their involvement in the killing of innocents overseas caught in the blast zone of missiles aimed at alleged militants.

Former Reagan OMB Director David Stockman was 'allowed' on CNBC this morning - much to their chagrin now we suspect - and espoused his own brand of truthiness, starting with this epic tirade:

"Ron Paul is the only one who is right about the Fed, and the Fed is the heart of the problem. They have destroyed the capital markets and the money markets; interest rates mean nothing; everything is trading off the Fed and Wall Street isn't even home - as it's now a bunch of computers trading word-clouds emitted by this central banker and that"

In this environment, he goes on, everyone is being given the wrong signal - i.e. the Ryan/Romney campaign is abnout restoring vibrant capitalism; how can you do that when the financial markets are dead - the lifeblood of a capitalist system. And that is the problem today.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

By: Eric Sharp
The Sunday before the 2012 RNC, a unique political event took place. "We Are The Future Rally" with Ron Paul drew an overflow crowd of more than 10,000 young people. While the GOP Establishment was busy pushing Ron Paul's delegates to the margins with rule changes, the R3VOLUTION was making other plans.

"We Are The Future" isn't just a name, it is a declaration. What we are looking at is a "libertarian long-march", to borrow a Marxist term (it's pay back for stealing the word liberal). What this means is that the Ron Paul Revolutionaries are not going to quietly assimilate into the machine and become good cogs that do what they are told.

They will "throw their bodies upon the gears". They will keep pushing every way they can until a free society is achieved. The method of each activist is less important than that they are truly radical in their pursuit of liberty. Murray Rothbard stated July 1977, "What divides the movement now, the true division, is not anarchist vs. minarchist, but radical vs. conservative." Ron Paul's movement is one of radicals who are in revolt against the established order. Some will run for office, others will run agorist black markets, but
they will all do their part to fulfill the dream of living free.

Ron Paul in his address at the rally spoke of the changing of eras. This is a powerful idea that gives a broader perspective to the libertarian mission. The Progressive era of big-government corporatism is coming to an end. It is ending not just in policy, but in the hearts and minds of people everywhere. Ron Paul announced that we have already entered a Libertarian Age and we are just seeing the last vestiges of the old guard scrambling to prevent the inevitable.

With that in mind, take a look at this exert from a recent American Conservative article,

What the reactions to Akin’s gaffe ... expose[s] is a fear in
the soul of the GOP that history is passing it by and the end may be
near. For decades, the GOP has been the party that cuts marginal tax rates,
opposes abortion, defends traditional marriage, sends troops to fight
for our values abroad and slashes government spending.

Today’s GOP establishment is queasy even talking about social issues
and recognizes that the new America has had it with the Afghanistans and
Iraqs, wants to raise taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent and contains
scores of millions who will punish any politician who threatens their benefits.

The GOP’s insoluble problem is that the multicultural, multiethnic
and multilingual country they created with their open borders appears
not to like the brand of dog food the party sells.

I have a message for the Grand Old Party: History IS passing you by! What ever relevance the GOP Old Guard still had they destroyed in Tampa at the 2012 RNC.

How can anyone be so sure of this? Why, when straits seem so dire?

Because the old regime is in the process of imploding on itself and more and more are becoming libertarian everyday. Ron Paul more than doubled his votes from 2008 to 2012 in just 4 years. Most people do not vote in primaries unless they are motivated and paying attention, so most of Ron Paul's votes were not mere punched chads to be forgotten by history- they are newly awakened and invigorated political activists who are in the game for R3VOLUTION. The number of votes hasn't just doubled, the number of people that hold libertarian values and are willing to act on them has doubled.

That is significant.

But it isn't just Ron Paul people though. The trend across America is that folks are loosening up on social issues, and losing faith in the government's competence to solve economic problems. Increasingly socially liberal and economically conservative, or broadly speaking, libertarian. Why then would the GOP push away the one man that can bring this in this new generation? Let's ask the former chair of the Republican National Committee, Micheal Steele. He said on the Daily Show,

"What the Republican National Committee did to Ron Paul was the
height of rudeness and stupidity for this reason: Why would you alienate
an individual who has the ability to attract a new generation of
voters, who are already skeptical of your institution but are willing to
at least listen through the vehicle of this individual and the words
that he is saying?

Why would you alienate them, get on the floor and not
let them speak? Not have his name go up on the board and see the number
of electoral votes that he receives? This is crazy! ... They are afraid of that which they cannot control."

Let's read that one more time: They are afraid of that which they cannot control.
What we saw at the RNC is nothing more than Party dinosaurs refusing to let go of the anti-woman, anti-liberty, and anti-reason Party of the "Moral Majority". They are staring history dead in the eyes and will not blink until their eye sockets are dried out.

There will come a day when the generation that grew up with Leave it to Beaver will be too few to support candidates cookie-cuttered from the 1950s. As time goes on there will be less "Moral Majority" type voters, and more "live-and-let-live" type voters. The Republican Party alienates Ron Paul's followers, libertarians, grassroots conservatives, and voters under 35 at their own peril.

Conventional Republicans are invited to join, rather than fight, The R3VOLTION. Rather than be left behind in the "dustbin of history", be a part of the Libertarian Era.

“Instead of seeing this as a continuation of the era of the 20th
century that gave us so much death and destruction and undermining our
liberties, and conditions today that are so dangerous, let us think that
we are now moving into a new era.

A new era where we’re going to
concentrate on liberty and freedom and property and peace. I believe
that is the cause that we should lead and I thank you very much for
being a part of it.” Ron Paul

Delegates and convention goers who were forced to wait for buses to be
rerouted expressed surprise that the Occupy presence has been stronger
at the DNC than at the Republican convention in Tampa last week. "I
didn't see them at the Republican convention," said Wandra Ashley-Williams, vice president of the Maryland State Conference NAACP. "That's not good."

Bad news for party elites. Perhaps Occupy knew that Ron Paul's people
were already going to bring the fight to the RNC. Anyway what this
means for the DNC is that they have a populous movement angry not just
at Republicans but mostly at the Democrats for selling out.

Compare what Reason.tv reported people were saying about Corporate contributions and the bailouts inside and outside of the Democratic National Convention. Convention goers saw no problem with the bailouts, while Occupy protestors compared the bailouts to theft.

Friday’s payroll jobs report says that 96,000 new jobs were created in August and that the unemployment rate (U.3) fell from 8.3% to 8.1%. As 96,000 new jobs are not enough to keep up with population growth, the decline in the U.3 unemployment rate was caused by 368,000 discouraged job seekers giving up on finding employment and dropping out of the work force as measured by U.3. ....

Let’s have a look at those 96,000 jobs. What kind of high-tech, high-income super jobs is “the world’s only superpower, the indispensable nation, the world’s greatest economy and capitalist heaven” creating? The answer is lowly paid third world jobs, which is why there is not and cannot be an economic recovery. All the good jobs have been moved offshore in order to maximize the incomes of the rich.

There’s been a lot of loose talk and leaked tales about what an attack on Iran might ultimately entail. Anthony Cordesman, one of Washington’s best-connected defense analysts, has put together a remarkably detailed inventory of what it would take to strike Iran (.pdf), cataloging everything from the number of bombers required to the types of bombs they ought to carry. He analyzes both Israeli and American strikes, both nuclear and not. He examines possible Iranian counterattacks, and ways to neutralize them. It leads Cordesman to a two-fold conclusion:

“Israel does not have the capability to carry out preventive strikes that could do more than delay Iran’s efforts for a year or two.” Despite the increasingly sharp rhetoric coming out of Jerusalem, the idea of Israel launching a unilateral attack is almost as bad as allowing Tehran to continue its nuclear work unchallenged. It would invite wave after wave of Iranian counterattacks — by missile, terrorist, and boat — jeopardizing countries throughout the region. It would wreak havoc with the world’s oil supply. And that’s if Israel even manages to pull the mission off — something Cordesman very much doubts.

Unquestionably, the Republican Party has embraced strong arm Nazi tactics to squash conservative leaning liberty activists who seek to restore America to constitutional rule that parallels the originalist vision of our founders. At first, it was the ruthless disenfranchisement of Ron Paul supporters and legally elected delegates by the RNC and state GOP machines that literally evicted liberty activists from the Republican Party because of our advocacy for limited government, fiscal solvency and the restoration of constitutionally mandated gold backed currency. But now that Romney has been anointed the Republican nominee, the focus of the Republican Party has shifted to disenfranchising 3rd parties by using the judicial system to remove its most formidable challenger - the Libertarian Party.

It's been said many times that the US is really nothing more than the resurrected British Empire that lost its power and prestige post WW II when the US fanatically embraced British style militarism and empire that catapulted America to the status of the world's sole superpower because of its superior military might. Never before in human history had a sole superpower dominated for so long and without challenge. The US-British alliance has frequently been dubbed the Anglo-sphere.

Taxpayers in Europe (and the United States) who have been terrorized since 2008 by government officials warning about economic armageddon, catastrophe, and pestilence should look to tiny Iceland for a taste of how little there is to fear when the experts can't save the people.

Naïve Americans are quick to applaud our military interventions in the false belief that we are doing good things, spreading Jeffersonian democracy and actually helping people who are suffering. But the truth is far different, very ugly and so horrifyingly repugnant that it should constitute an assault on our moral instincts.

Haiti and its suffering is a profound example of a nation destroyed and ruthlessly plundered for 200 years by Spanish, French and US corporate imperialists

Critics from across the political spectrum are outraged after the Obama administration announced that it was unconstitutionally sending 200 U.S. Marines to Guatemala under the guise of fighting the drug war. According to officials, the American troops were deployed as part of “Operation Martillo,” a multi-national squad of soldiers and law-enforcement personnel supposedly aimed at countering narcotics trafficking throughout Central America.

The new President of Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina — a widely respected tough-on-crime former military general who opposed communism — had said earlier this year that legalizing drugs would be a better approach. However, the Obama administration swiftly deployed high-level functionaries to coerce the leader into backing down. Apparently the mission was a success.

In mid-July, the Guatemalan government signed what news reports and officials described as a “treaty” with the Obama administration — the U.S. Senate, however, never ratified any such agreement as required under the Constitution. Within a month of the controversial deal, U.S. Marines, equipment, and military helicopters began arriving in Guatemala.

If the point of quantitative easing was to provide enough liquidity to keep the massive, earth-shatteringly large debt load serviceable, then quantitative easing succeeded — but the “success” of sustaining the crippling debt load is that it remains a huge burden weighing down on the economy like a tonne of bricks. This “success” has turned markets into junkies, increasingly dependent on central bank liquidity injections. After QE3 will come more and more and more easing until the market has either successfully managed to deleverage to a sustainable level (and Japan’s total debt level as a percentage of GDP remains higher than it was in 1991, even after 20 years of painful deleveraging — so there is no guarantee whatever that this will ever occur), or until central banks give up and let markets liquidate. Quantitative easing’s “success” has been a junkie recovery and a zombie market.

As I see it, the West’s economic depression is being directly caused by an excessive total debt burden — just as Japan’s has been for twenty years; the bust occurred on the back of a huge outgrowth of debt and coincided with the beginning of a painful new era of deleveraging. And the central bank response has been to preserve the debt burden, thus perpetuating the problems rather than allowing them to clear in a short burst of deflationary liquidation as was the norm in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Whenever 'the poor' and 'minorities' are invoked in the same headline, it's good to set your skepticism filter extra low or you will likely never get through the first paragraph of an article (umm, including this one) because the issue is rarely science or even policy, it is instead advocacy.(1)

Oddly, when it comes to a really bad cap-and-trade idea, like for emissions, environmentalists claim it will help the poor and minorities.

Firearms expert, hickock45 demonstrates the Glock 19 on the range. This midsize 9mm is one of the most widely purchased handguns ever. It's simple to shoot with little recoil, and it's easy to break down for cleaning. And, it's very accurate. And talk about reliability.......watch him go through seven 15 round magazines in a couple of minutes.

The federal mandate to turn corn into motor fuel is bad for the environment and raises food prices. But both parties need corn-state votes too much to care.

Corn ethanol is the Franken fuel of American politics. Neither party, neither candidate dares question the program that requires motorists to buy a corrosive, low-heat-content, hydrophilic fuel adulterant—even though that program is now consuming 37 percent of all American corn production and driving up food prices.